If you’re just starting to blog and you think you might want to try to earn a living from blogging, Joy’s book is a great resource that will help you achieve your blogging goals. Joy covers how to develop a consistent voice and style, attract and build an audience, overcome blogger’s block, build a community, and how to attract and manage advertisers, among other topics.

Of the book, we loved the blogger profiles best. Joy interviews 18 bloggers who share what inspired them to start blogging and how their sites grew in popularity. We couldn’t help but notice that of the 18 bloggers profiled, precisely 50% of them use WordPress to power their sites.

Joel Henriques was waiting tables and bartending at Portland restaurants to supplement his and his wife’s income. When their twins (a boy and girl) were born, he quit his restaurant duties and found he had less time to pursue his musical and artistic hobbies once he transitioned into full-time dad mode. Yet he became increasingly fascinated with watching his kids play. Despite the fancy wooden teething rings and toys that he and his wife had purchased, the babies were surprisingly drawn to their drool bibs. Their love of the texture and material in these simple objects inspired Joel to start making his own toys for them. These toys, including modern stuffed animals and a wooden elephant puzzle, sparked the interest of his art buyers and family members, so he began a blog, Made by Joel, to keep track of his creations. Made by Joel includes craft projects that parents, educators, and children can make, encouraging creativity and play and inspiring families to spend more quality time together.

I DO blog for passion and creating a community – advocacy for causes I believe in is also my goal. I have shared this with fellow-bloggers in my home country, Jamaica. (The third annual Jamaica Blog Awards are coming up next month!)

Good to see more blogging books on the market. Books likes these are very useful in getting people inspired about the different opportunities there are when starting a blog and getting people motivated to achieve some of the same things that the interview/profiled bloggers have achieved.